Company a finalist in Wired business competition

Jason Bradford’s music label, Tone Box Digital, has been selected as a finalist in a Wired small-business competition that runs online this month.

Bradford is the only finalist from the South and is going up against four other innovative small-business owners for a $40,000 prize that includes a write-up in Wired magazine, office equipment and an infusion of cash.

Earlier in the fall, Wired put out a call for up-and-coming small businesses that aligned with its mentality — green, tech-savvy, different outlook on business — to enter the competition.

Bradford said he submitted his entry in September, then forgot about it until he got a call from Wired in October that he had been selected as a finalist.

The Charleston-based entrepreneur flew to New York in early November to film the short video that went on Wired.com on Tuesday. The finalist with the most votes at the end of the month is the winner.

Bradford’s business, Tone Box, fits easily into the Wired criteria: It has taken a nontraditional route to deliver a traditional product and has been growing since its launch in 2003.

Bradford, whose background is in music production and engineering, started his own record label with the idea that artists should always make more money than anyone else in the chain. He began with artist Eddie Bush but quickly realized that the traditional model of music distribution wasn’t going to work.

“I knew we had to find a new model for the record label,” Bradford said. So he decided to switch to a completely digital model in early 2004. Sales, distribution and marketing would all be online.

Tone Box Digital has expanded to include artists from across the country. The label distributes music in more than 80 outlets worldwide, including iTunes and Amazon.com.